Six for safe standing

The FSF's Safe Standing Petition now has more than 12,000 signatories – click here to sign the petition if you haven’t already done so. If you’ve signed the petition, that’s enough, right? Wrong. There’s plenty more to do - we hope every fan in the UK sees our petition and for that we need you, the FSF member and football fan, to get cracking.

Contact your MP. Don Foster MP's Standing Bill is due for a second reading in Parliament on 17th June 2011. The more MPs back his Bill, the better. Contact your MP and ask them if they’re backing Don Foster’s Bill. If they say they’re not, let us know why - not all MPs are familiar with the arguments and we'll bust any myths. It’ll take you no more than a few minutes via WriteToThem.com.

Contact your club. Tell them why you back safe standing. So long as fans are silent on the matter, even if they do stand at games, clubs can claim that there is no appetite for safe standing areas. At most clubs, we know this is not true, but it’s up to fans to prove it by telling them straight. Silence is not an option.

Contact the FA and the Premier League or Football League. The authorities have told us they do not believe that a majority of fans wish to see safe standing areas. They claim to receive next to no correspondence on the matter. Why don’t fans change that? Email the FA here, the Premier League here, and the Football League here. Tell them what you think.

This really is a critical time for those who back the FSF’s safe standing campaign as there’s a bit of a perfect storm brewing. Not only has the FSF’s petition got off to a flying start but there’s also Don Foster’s Safe Standing Bill and, for the first time, a sports minister who’s willing to engage.

Two days later the FSF's Safe Standing Petition was launched in a blaze of publicity via (deep breath) The Guardian, BBC, Sky Sports News, ITV, Talksport, BBC 5Live, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, RTE, and countless other local newspapers and radio stations. Apologies to those missed off that list, we lost track in the rush.

We’re confident hundreds of thousands of football fans nodded along in agreement while reading their morning paper or listening to the radio. But that in itself isn’t enough. We need those people to engage, sign the petition, contact their MP, club, and even the football authorities to let them know what football fans think. Spread the word.

If every football fan who backs our Safe Standing Campaign followed the steps outlined the weight of opinion would be so strong, that the government and football authorities would have no choice but to listen.